Tag Archives: Science

Recently, legislation was proposed in France which would have banned agencies from allowing models with a body mass index of less than 18 to participate in Paris Fashion Week. Parliament member Oliver Veran stated that “We want to tackle the idea that agencies feel able to stop models from eating, for example, asking them to eat cotton balls to lose their appetite.” Which is pretty solid, in readme’s opinion. In fact, any bill that keeps a company from starving its employees could probably be called a positive.

Of course, newspapers and websites have done their best to accurately represent the issue, using sensible and not-at-all sensationalist headlines like “Anorexic Models: France Considers Ban of Super-Skinny Models” and “Will Banning Thin Models Help Curb Anorexia?” These news groups are, of course, referring to the belief that eating disorders are directly caused by having skinny models, and not by any other possible factors whatsoever.

Thankfully, readme’s watched a lot of made-for-TV movies about eating disorders, which pretty much makes it an expert. Did you know that all eating disorders are actually anorexia? And that all cases of anorexia are caused by girls (specifically, white teen girls) seeing skinny models and becoming insecure about their weight? And you can tell whether a person is anorexic based solely on whether they’re skinny or not? Sure, some sources like ‘everything we know about psychology’ or ‘the DSM-V’ claim otherwise, but did the DSM-V ever win a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Television Movie? readme thought not.

See, the problem with disorders these days are that they’re too complicated. Anything from a person’s family life to their work environment to past medical history could cause them to develop an eating disorder. And that means if we want to stop people from getting eating disorders, we’d have to fight all those factors and that’s just hard. But if we just say models did it, we don’t have to worry about any of that! Then we can just ban skinny models and anorexia will be solved, and if anybody disagrees then we know they’re not watching enough Lifetime movies.

Scientists have recently come forward saying there may be more planets beyond Neptune in our solar system, with orbits too distant to be observed by conventional means but still orbiting around our sun. They came to this conclusion after analysis of what they refer to as “extreme trans-Neptunian objects” (or “ETNOs”), two of which had orbits that seemed more similar to those of planets than anything else.

If science will permit readme to don its “extreme trans-facial intelligence modifiers” (or “smart-person glasses”) for a moment, readme would like to say one thing: bullshit.

Now, readme knows what you’re thinking. A ninth, even tenth planet in the solar system? That sounds pretty cool. Why aren’t you excited to find out there might be more to our solar system than we previously imagined, readme? Let readme tell you why: readme is old, kids. It’s, like, twenty now. That’s positively ancient. You know readme was alive when VHS was a thing? And phones with actual buttons? readme could tell you stories, kid. Back in its day, we had to do our twitter hashtags by hand. Uphill. Both ways.

But the great thing about that you never have to be happy about change, ever. It’s like a rule or something. So as a wizened old twenty-year-old, let readme tell you something, science: back in readme’s day, we had a ninth planet. We called it Pluto. And you scientist took it away. So fuck you, scientists. readme doesn’t care how “extreme” your trans-Neptunian objects are, if they’re not Pluto you can go stick it where the sun don’t shine (on the far pole of Uranus, which due to its 98-degree axial tilt leaves each hemisphere facing away from the sun for periods of 42 years at a time).

The hopes and dreams of comic-book aficionados everywhere were crushed by a recent paper documenting an investigative study on a meteorite that landed in California three years ago. Scientist were hoping to find signs of prebiotic organisms in the meteorite, but found that, rather than inadvertently releasing an alien virus that triggers mutant superpowers in all those it infects, we were the ones infecting the meteorite.

It turns out that “meteorites can be contaminated by Earth-based organics very quickly”, with bacteria and other microscopic organisms taking no time in overwhelming the native extraterrestrial organics by sheer numbers. This confirms what astrobiologists have always feared: there is no conceivable way for scientists to gain space-based superpowers.

“The whole reason I became a scientist was so I could get my hands on a radioactive meteorite and develop superpowers due to an inexplicable flaw in the lead shielding that lets the thing bathe me in its mysterious cosmic rays,” says one disgruntled physicist. “And now it turns out the shielding was there to protect the meteorite from exposure to me?”

“Yeah, the whole thing was a real bummer,” says Scott Sandford, co-author of the original paper, in regards to his team’s discovery. “I was a perfect candidate to gain accidental superpowers. I even had the alliterative name and everything.”

This finding overturns everything previously believed by fiction-based science, such as the healing powers of CPR and what is known in the scientific community as the Johnny 5 effect, whereby lightning causes machinery to spontaneously gain sentience. In particular, superhero origin stories have suddenly come under new scrutiny. The findings by Sandford et. al have led many in the scientific community to conclude that the Green Lantern’s power ring really came from a cereal box, that Peter Parker was most likely left unaltered by his radioactive spider bite while the spider gained all the proportionate strength of a human, and that Superman was probably just some neighboring farm baby who wandered into the Kryptonian rocket when the Kents weren’t looking.

Despite the setbacks caused by his paper, Sandford remains optimistic that studies of this kind will be a fruitful area of research in the detection of possible origin stories. Sandford finishes by saying that in studying artifacts from outer space, scientists “must always be vigilantes–vigilant. That’s what I meant to say. Vigilant. But also fight crime in your spare time.”

Colorado sixth-grader Michal Bodzianowski recently made every college student in the country jealous by winning a national science competition with an experiment where he brewed his own beer. Apparently, you’re totally allowed to brew beer at the age of eleven so long as it’s for science, a fact that probably would have helped all of us a lot more to learn about ten years ago.

In other lessons that would have been helpful a decade earlier, it turns out that middle school teachers don’t get mad when they ask you for science and you give them beer (actually, we probably could have figured that one out on our own). Instead, they will praise your scientific know-how, as Bodzianowski’s teacher, Sharon Combs, did when he submitted the project. “He’s very talented,” she said, adding that “He came up with this idea all on his own,” though there may have been a little wink-wink-nudge-nudge-you-know-what-would-be-a-good-Christmas-present-for-your-favorite-teacher involved.

The experiment was one of eleven selected as part of the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program, a project which sends middle-school science projects into space in order to inspire young scientists, because let’s be honest, potato clocks are way more inspiring when you put them in space. One might question why, of all things, scientists would be most concerned with mankind’s future ability to brew beer in space. Bodzianowski says it is because beer is useful as a source of emergency hydration when no pure water is available, and that the by-products of beer might have significant medical uses when brewed in space. “Yes,” said the astronauts when asked if this was the reason, as they piled the experiment into the shuttle, along with the other winning experiments on the effects of microgravity on marijuana-growing and crystal-meth-making, “That is our reason exactly.”

While we cannot say exactly what the results of this experiment will be, at the very least once this experiment is concluded mankind will be able to say we’ve brewed a beer in space. Most might consider that an end unto itself, for others this is only the beginning. “You never know how some of these experiments can be a stepping stone to something else,” said Combs excitedly of the experiment, “That’s how science works!” So true. Who knows, maybe we’ll find the Higgs boson floating in one of those space-Heinekens. Or maybe we’ll discover the secret to quantum foam in the foam of a nice lager. Or maybe we’ll just end up with really drunk astronauts. You never know, after all.

A man went to see his doctor. He said, “Doctor, doctor, I’ve got a problem.”

The doctor said, “What is it?”

He said, “I’ve been getting really drunk lately, but I haven’t had any alcohol in years!”

While we at readme realize this sounds like the setup to a really lame joke, it is actually a real thing that happened to one man in East Texas. Said man had been experiencing bouts of inebriation for five years despite abstaining from alcoholic beverages.

After talking with his wife, who instantly believed him when he said he hadn’t been drinking anything, occifer, honest (if only our RA’s were so credulous), told him to see their doctor, who found that the man’s guts had been literally brewing their own beer.

As a college news organization, readme is legally obligated to report on all beer-centric news, so of course it got straight to work investigating this awesome phenomenon.

The condition is called Auto-Brewery Syndrome, where a buildup of brewer’s yeast in the intestines causes the stomach to ferment beer, which is then absorbed immediately into the bloodstream. So, basically, it’s like having an endless supply of Miller Lite without the high calories and disgusting aftertaste (And beforetaste. And duringtaste). Damn, if readme had a ‘problem’ like that, it would open up its own microbrewery. The only customer would be readme.

For whatever reason, though, this man felt that having an endless supply of free beer he could not get arrested for and did not have to taste was simply cramping his style.

His doctor was able to treat the condition with a simple anti-yeast medication, in what is possibly the most depressing story readme has ever heard about a medical condition being cured quickly and without side effects.

In what is almost certainly completely unrelated news, college students all across the country have been admitted to hospitals for overdosing on brewer’s yeast. Ha, but seriously, guys, don’t do this. Remember that beer is way cheaper than medical bills.